Thursday, August 07, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A huge explosion thought to have been a car bomb rocked the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad Thursday morning, killing at least three people.

Young Iraqi men, chanting anti-Jordanian slogans, stormed the gate of the embassy and began smashing portraits of Jordan's King Abdullah II and his late father, King Hussein.

A witness said the bomb appeared to have been in an empty minibus parked outside the walled embassy compound and was detonated remotely. Mandoh Gaahi, the witness, said the blast shook buildings and broke windows hundreds of yards away...

Tensions between the neighboring countries have been high because of Jordan's support for the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

While Jordan is a major entry point into Iraq and remains a large trading partner, many Iraqis are resentful that Jordan dropped its support for Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War, and allowed U.S. troops to use its soil as a base during the latest war.

King Abdullah II last week granted "humanitarian asylum" to two daughters of Saddam, whose husbands took refuge in Jordan but were lured back and killed by Saddam's regime in 1996.

The more I see it, the more disgusting I find it to be.

This Associated Press report leads the reader to conclude the underlying cause for the blast at the Jordanian Embassy is that Jordan allegedgly quit supporting Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War...and allowed US troops access during this war.

So, apparently Jordan and the Husseins just don't get along...right?

So, why, then, with all the desolate sandy hot Islamic countries to choose from did just last week Saddam Hussein's daughters accept sanctuary in Jordan?

Isn't it just as likely that someone bombed the embassy because of this favor to the Hussein family as is likely the authors insinuation?

It seems to me to be just a bit convoluted here, 100 days after the war, to suggest that only now has some faction grown perturbed enough with Jordan's actions in the wake of 1991 (hello! 12 years ago!) to finally get around to bombing their embassy.

Some may think I'm nuts here...but me, I just resent that AP reporter trying to "presume me" into some conclusion when he has not established anything near fact.